


in time of daffodils

by yourestuckinmyhead



Series: we are only bleeding hearts [1]
Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, catch me if you can - Freeform, hint: too many, how many different versions of this have i written, i hope it does, it doesn't really make sense, wow kind of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7611439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourestuckinmyhead/pseuds/yourestuckinmyhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has been alive for a very long time.</p><p>People always seem to forget that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in time of daffodils

**Author's Note:**

> I stole most of this. (I'm kidding.)
> 
> Title is from "in time of daffodils" by e.e. cummings
> 
> in time of daffodils(who know  
> the goal of living is to grow)  
> forgetting why, remember how
> 
> in time of lilacs who proclaim  
> the aim of waking is to dream,  
> remember so(forgetting seem)
> 
> in time of roses(who amaze  
> our now and here with paradise)  
> forgetting if, remember yes
> 
> in time of all sweet things beyond  
> whatever mind may comprehend,  
> remember seek(forgetting find)
> 
> and in a mystery to be  
> (when time from time shall set us free)  
> forgetting me, remember me

 

He walks into her room with the lightest of footsteps, and can’t remember the last time he was this careful, if he ever was.

 

She is lying on her bed.

 

Dying.

 

(This is not the first time.)

 

She has died once already, lying down.

 

“Do you want to live?” He doesn’t know why he bothered asking.

 

She wants to die while dancing, fighting, clawing her way through bodies. She wants to go out with glory in her heart and blood on her hands and in her teeth.

 

“Yes.”

 

She wants to survive.

 

She wants to live.

 

~~_He did not need to tread lightly._ ~~

 

___________

 

 They are dancing, the two of them.

 

The twenties suite her more than he would like. Looking at her now is like looking into another world. It’s imagining her in another place another time, it’s imagining meeting her a hundred years before.

 

It’s wondering if anything else he has ever done besides saving her that night has meant anything at all.

 

_Werewolf Curse, a thousand years, living living living._

 

(It hasn’t.)

 

___________

 

He is a hero and she loves him.

 

This is not his body.

 

He knows that.

 

The ill fitting limbs, the slower reaction time, her _tongue_.

 

Package deal, it seems.

 

This is not what she wants.

 

He knows that.

 

Her sighs of _Tyler, More, Yes, Alive_.

 

They tell him everything.

 

But the slide of fingers and graze of teeth and _friction_.

 

This is not his body.

 

He knows that, and so does she.

 

She knows _~~him~~_ this body.

 

This boy.

 

She knows.

 

Dammit.

 

___________

 

He is in a bar, laughing with Kol about death.

 

She walks in like a breath of fresh air, and storms out again, taking all the oxygen with her.

 

He is pulled out by her current.

 

“I want to talk about _you_ ,” He says.

 

It’s all we have in common, he doesn’t.

 

___________

 

He tries to burn her out of him.

 

_Hint: It doesn’t work._

 

___________

 

“There is some part of you, somewhere deep down, that’s human.”

 

He almost lets her die to prove there isn’t.

 

___________

 

They are burying bodies in a forest.

 

 _He_ is burying twelve bodies in a forest.

 

“It’s almost like it didn’t happen.”

 

“But it did, didn’t it.”

 

And it’s stupid, how angry he feels.

 

Death, destruction, these are things that he revels in.

 

~~_How marvelous she looked with fear in her heart and a dagger in her hands._ ~~

 

But, he also likes a plan, he likes checks and balances. Saving one does not equal the death of twelve.

 

Math is easy, justice is easy.

 

Nothing is simple, though, when it comes to her. When it comes between her friends and a means to an end.

 

 _This is loyalty._ His heart brain soul says, but if this is loyalty, if this is friendship, he wonders what she will use to justify _his_ end. The deaths of hundreds.

 

He wonders if he can watch it happen,

 

The world burning.

 

___________

 

She is there when he tastes victory for the first time in a thousand years.

 

Maybe that’s why he wants her.

 

___________

 

They are standing in his art room.

 

She is wearing his gifts, so he assumes that she likes _~~him~~_ them.

 

She asks about the art and they are laughing laughing laughing, he makes sweeping grand statements that make all the girls’ hearts flutter in their chests but,

 

Not hers.

 

No, hers is not even stuttering, not speeding up or slowing down. She is a stone cold version of who she was minutes ago.

 

And she is cutting him open and examining his insides and outsides, his psyche and bones and heart and mind.

 

No one has ever read him like this, known him so painfully so thoroughly within hours minutes seconds how _long_ did it take for her to pin him down exactly.

 

Too quickly.

 

She throws the bracelet he gave her on the ground and he almost kills her right there and then but-

 

_There right there that inhale there was something about it-_

 

And she’s gone.

 

___________

 

It’s a sick sort of perversion, and he knows it.

 

The glimmer of sun off of her honey gold hair as she rips his heart out of his chest, the rage that flashes in her sky blue eyes as she does it.

 

Every ounce of her anger, every hint of revenge that scavenges her body is beautiful.

 

She is the most magnificent creature he has ever seen.

 

(He wants her to tear him apart.)

 

(He wants to destroy her while she does it.)

 

___________

 

He has been alive for a very long time.

 

People always seem to forget that.

 

Forget that he has razed empires, murdered queens, conquered enemies. That he is a thousand years old.

 

He has _lived_ more than anyone ever has and ever will.

 

He is going to live forever.

 

Oscar Wilde wrote that the soul is a thing that can be captured into paint and preserved forever. The pristine beauty of innocence kept for all eternity, stored away where only living body could corrupt it. Immortality.

 

He has perfected the method.  (He’s _dead_.)

 

He has captured the very essence of his soul and poured it out into a painting he keeps above his mantel to remind himself that humanity _can_ be distilled, and that it no longer applies to him.

 

He is going to live forever.

 

Time does not apply to him, a fixed point for most of human history. _A thousand years_ , and not one second has passed without his presence, without his input.

 

He is a myth, a legend, a king, a _God._ The ruler of all things living and dead.

 

The ghosts of people he killed do not haunt him, they _bow_ to him. Each part of who they once were only adding to his immense power.

 

He is unstoppable, unnatural, unkillable.

 

Nothing in the entirety of his undead existence has anything come close to ending him.  

 

_Absolutely nothing._

 

___________

 

“Do you really think that low of me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

___________

 

There is a hummingbird in his path, just floating in place. He wonders what it’s wings look like to humans, whether they can see the powerful fluttering appendages, if the bird looks effortless in flight.

 

He envies that.

 

The ability to believe that life is easy, that things can just glide through air.

 

Human.

 

He looks at the hummingbird, and its will to live. Hears its heart beating so quick so fast. He wonders if it ever _stops_.

 

A thousand years of living and he hasn’t stopped breathing.

 

Why is that.

 

Why-

 

He kills the hummingbird.

 

___________

 

“We don’t have a thing.”

 

___________

 

Their first kiss happens when he is not himself _._

 

He tries to reassure her, tells her that the world is not ending. She’s gonna be fine, just fine.

 

In a world where he is dead and Tyler is dying.

 

She’s going to be just fine.

 

But she kisses him.

 

And she’s not leaving not leaving this boy this insignificant body. Why does she care? How can he make her care like this for him?

 

Why does that matter?

 

He is a wolf and she is screaming.

 

They are both running from something.

 

___________

 

The world tries to burn her out of him.

 

_Hint: He is stronger than the world_

 

___________

 

 

Kol is dead.

 

_Kol is dead Kol is dead Kol is dead_

 

_Kol_

 

 _is dead Kol is dead Kol is dead_ _Kol is dead Kol is                                                       dead Kol is dead Kol is dead Kol is_

 

 _dead Kol_ _is dead Kol is dead Kol_

 

_is_

 

 _dead Kol is                                                                 dead Kol is dead Kol is dead Kol is_ _dead_

_Kol is dead                                                                                Kol is deadKol is dead_

 

_Kol is dead       Kol is dead_

 

 _Kol is dead Kol_ _is_

 

_dead_

 

_Kol is dead Kol is dead Kol is dead_

_Kol is dead Kol is dead Kol is dead Kol is dead_

 

Rage, destroy, pillage.

 

They killed Kol, _they murdered Kol_ , and now Kol is dead.

 

Always and forever.

 

(Take something of his, he takes back.)

 

She’s here, now.

 

For the second time, lying down, dying. _Dying dying dying._

 

Death.

 

How can he win at death?

 

He’s killing her, but she didn’t kill Kol. Didn’t stab him in the chest, in the back, didn’t _lure_ Kol.

 

She didn’t do anything, but he’s _killing_ her.

 

Funny, he never really considered himself a murderer before.

 

A wolf, a predator, a realist, a killer. Yes, yes yes. Those are him.

 

_~~Monster~~. _

 

But murderer implies that the hearts he rips from chests are important, that death is important.

 

Kol was important, and so is she.

 

She’s important.

 

“You love me.”

 

He looks into the abyss and sees himself. The abyss is a mirror, just his reflection upon his reflection upon his reflection...forever and always.

 

~~_He cannot destroy kill murder Caroline Forbes._ ~~

 

He saves her from himself.

 

Tells her and everyone she loves to run.

 

_Kol is dead._

 

Kol will be resurrected.

 

___________

 

“One date.”

 

___________

 

She was almost a sacrifice.

 

 _Almost_.

 

All of this could have been avoided, without Stephan, without Damon.

 

Without the sun the moon the earth the universe.

 

All of everything could have been dust.

 

And he could have been nothing at all.

 

(Any and all of this would have saved him plenty of time.)

 

He is so lucky, so impossibly lucky, that everything happened the way it did.

 

Every single second of it.

 

___________

 

Damon is kicking and screaming and crying.

 

All of it useful, but he needs something else right now.

 

“If you’re going to be bad, be bad with purpose.”

 

Funny, that this is the first time in centuries he doesn’t have one.

 

___________

 

He is not who he once was, but she doesn’t care.

 

He’s not good enough.

 

___________

 

So, this is what it’s like.

 

To die.

 

Wood and splinters are shifting shifting _moving_ through muscle and skin.

 

He is going to die, here.

 

With pliers in his back and hope in his heart for the first time ~~ _since he died with a sword through it_~~ in centuries.

 

He calls her. Over and over and over and over.

 

_Help me._

 

Blind faith.

 

But she comes and she’s complaining like the world is ending or maybe it is.

 

(Maybe the end of his life is the end of the world, maybe he is the only thing that matters.)

 

“Trust, that’s the foundation of any friendship”

 

“You can’t kill him, you can’t kill Tyler or Silas or Anybody.”

 

“I should have turned my back on you ages ago.”

 

And then he’s free.

 

Free from the burning pain in his heart,

 

(The physical part anyway.)

 

It was all a trick, a mind game, and here she is: the hero of the story.

 

~~_He is not the villain he is not the villain he is the victim._ ~~

 

He is laughing. Laughing so hard.

 

“Friends?”

 

It’s all he can ask for, so much and not enough, not nearly close to what he wants.

 

She smiles and it’s directed at him.

___________

 

“I don’t hate you.”

 

___________

 

He is staring at the clock and thinking of time, for once.

 

(How long until she wakes up.

 

How long until she calls.

 

How long until he hears her voice.

 

How long until he sees her.

 

Feels her.

 

How long until she lets him in.

 

How many seconds will it take for him to learn every part of her body, then her heart, then her soul.)

 

How long does it take to wreck the world, how many seconds minutes hours days years centuries does he have left.

 

He thought it was forever.

 

___________

 

" _Caroline, I’m standing in one of my favorite places in the world surrounded by food, music, art, culture, and all I could think about is how much I want to show it to you. Maybe one day you’ll let me_."

 

___________

 

She’s graduating _high school._

 

The fuck is wrong with him.

 

(What _isn’t._ )

 

__________

 

He is thinking of a time before time, before he counted seconds on clocks, before the he could feel the earth turning.

 

Henric was a living boy.

 

Klaus and Elijah and Rebekah and Kol and Finn, they laugh.

 

Henric, dead and gone, is more alive than they have ever been.

 

Had been. Right?

 

Klaus has never _~~lived~~_ grieved.

 

Maybe he should start.

 

___________

 

She is done running from him, but

 

By admitting this, she is running. She is hiding, securing a life without him lurking in dark corners, waiting for her to slip up, allowing him swoop in and save her.

 

But then she is kissing him, the real him, this time.

 

And it is all fire and teeth, tree bark and blood. Desire and despair.

 

He is hoping, too.

 

Trying to desperately make an impression, generate a longing that will tie her to him the same way that he is bound to her.

 

He is three separate things at once: he is an ocean wave, bearing down on a ship in a storm; he is a wolf who hunts with teeth and claws; and he is a man, a man a man a man, who is trying so hard to get the woman, _the_ woman, to need him the same way that he needs oxygen.

 

Dirt and leaves, skin and heat.

 

They are all that remain.

 

~~_Human skin would hold the bruises and cuts and feeling of her hands lips tongue for longer._ ~~

 

That and the memories.

  

___________

 

He promises to let her go, and he does.

 

He is done playing games, especially with her.

 

He’s too old.

 

Too old. Too old.

 

He hasn’t lived enough.

 

___________

 

Far away on some distant coast, there is a man with an easel and a paintbrush.

 

He doesn’t breathe for a long time.

 

He doesn’t need to.

 

___________

 

It’s been awhile.

 

(A thousand years of counting seconds counting years and minutes.)

 

He’s not sure how long.

 

But she is smiling at him.

 

 _Inhale, exhale, inhale_ -

 

“Klaus."

 

He smiles back at her.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, that was a non-linear story about feelings and Klaus as a Character.
> 
> (I've always felt that he is a dirty liar with his "I've only ever thought about being human once", but that is both completely unrelated and necessary to add and I don't know where I should put it.)
> 
> how are we feeling about that?
> 
> Sound off in a comment and hit me up with a kudos to make me feel less bad about how many hours I spent editing this piece of shit.
> 
> Please?


End file.
